The Pentagon on Monday detailed its $849.8 billion budget request for fiscal year 2025, a figure that adheres to the one percent spending cap from last year’s debt limit deal but is about $10 billion below what the department had originally projected.
A senior defense official told reporters ahead of the budget release the slight increase “is not enough to cover inflation,” and offered the department’s perspective on the uncertain funding outlook as final FY ‘24 appropriations and billions of dollars in the foreign aid supplemental remain pending before Congress.
“It is an increase over last year. It is not enough of an increase to cover inflation,” the senior defense official said. “That, again, is presumably not a surprise to anyone who drafted the [spending] caps or voted for the caps in the [Fiscal Responsibility Act] (FRA). Inflation has come down quite a bit, but it hasn’t come down to one percent. So it will be an issue there.”
The official noted DoD had originally projected an $860 billion topline for FY ‘25 prior to the debt limit deal, which locked in a one percent increase in FY ‘25 for defense and non-defense toplines.
“The president’s budget request complies with the mandated numbers of the FRA. Unfortunately, this defense topline number fails to keep pace with inflation and our adversaries,” Rep. Mike Rogers (R-Ala.), chair of the House Armed Services Committee, said in a statement on Monday. “I have been saying this for some time now – our defense budget should be built with the goal of deterring the threats facing our nation. Instead, we are forced to build a budget to meet an arbitrary number. I worry about the long-term impact this budget process will have on our national defense.”
The senior defense official told reporters the department’s aim is to get back to the projected spending path rolled out with its FY ‘24 budget request, presenting a slide that showed a “nearly identical” plan to get to a topline north of $920 billion by FY ‘29.
“Those that decide that sort of thing will have another crack at whether there needs to be another look at our topline or anybody else’s topline in return for whatever happens on the debt ceiling,” the official said. “Our plan is that this is a one-year blip. It’s a two-year deal. But we don’t have any insight into what the next two-year deal might look like, so that could get revisited. Our message is that we need to get back on plan.”
The Pentagon’s $849.8 billion budget for FY ‘25 is part of the Biden administration’s total $895.2 billion defense topline request, while the department continues operating under a continuing resolution stopgap funding measure as it awaits final FY ‘24 appropriations.
The department is seeking $167.5 billion for procurement, down slightly from the $170 billion requested for FY ‘24, and $143.2 billion for research and development, also a slight cut from the $145 billion in the last budget request.
For FY ‘25, the Army is seeking $185.8 billion, $257.6 billion for the Navy, $259.2 billion for the Air Force and $143.7 billion for remaining defense-wide efforts, which are flat figures compared to the FY ‘24 request.
The senior defense official noted the department’s science and technology request, in particular, was “a little pressurized” by the spending cap.
“That didn’t grow as much as some might like,” the official said.
Two significant procurement adjustments the senior defense official cited in the budget request includes plans to procure one Virginia-class submarine, rather than two as has been the case previously, as well as seeking a buy of 68 F-35 fighter aircraft compared to 83 in the FY ‘24 request.
“We have looked at, for several years in a row, putting money in for two [Virginia-class] subs [and] you’re not getting two subs a year back out. This year, I think everybody felt that it’s time for a fresh approach and a rest…There’s a lot of money in the industrial base to try and change the dynamics so that when we do go back to ordering two subs a year, we are more closely aligned to being able to get two submarines a year,” the official told reporters. “For the F-35, I think it’s in a little bit of a different place because, again, the program’s not going as fast as you would like in terms of getting to the capability levels. But that is…obviously something that you buy 80 of a year, so it’s different than when you buy one or two. You can always adjust a little more there…Given that it’s not getting to that capability quite as fast as you want, it’s something where it maybe made sense to slow down.”
With Congress still working on final FY ‘24 appropriations for several spending bills before the next March 22 deadline, including the defense budget, the Pentagon’s budget documents released Monday included figures on the department’s current operating levels which are set at FY ‘23 funding lines under the continuing resolution (Defense Daily, March 1).
“There’s no great way to do it in this situation. All the line items you’re going to see in all of the justification books on Monday will be what we asked for last year. All the total for any particular account or any OMB document will be what [the] CR [level] looks like. So a little bit of a hodgepodge there. But, again, there’s no great way to do it when the situation’s in flux,” the official told reporters.
“The idea is that we’ve had the priorities that we’ve had have been consistent. Therefore, we kind of depend on having the [FY] ‘24 bill finished and finished in a way that looks a lot like what we asked for, otherwise we’re going to have to go back to drawing board on a couple of fronts,” the official added. “[Congress] could have probably written this bill in December, possibly could have written it in November. But we are where we are, hoping to get that across the line soon.”
The senior defense official also cited the “problematic consequences” if Congress does not pass the pending supplemental with foreign aid for Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan, which includes billions of dollars to help the department replenish stockpiles of weapons pulled from its inventories for assistance efforts.
“Obviously for Ukrainians primarily, first and foremost, they’re low on ammunition today. They’re fighting and dying today. We can’t help them. But there isn’t another industrial base on the planet that can really take our place. I think we’ve seen that already,” the official said. We would be looking at shortages across CENTCOM operating costs, European operating costs, helping the Ukrainians, Taiwan and other partners in the Pacific, the submarine industrial base, a whole bunch of problems.”
The official said the department requires $10 billion in further funding to replace the full amount of equipment provided to Ukraine.
“If we don’t ever get this ‘24 supplemental, there are all kinds of foreign policy ramifications in addition to the readiness ramifications for us,” the official said.